Friday, September 9, 2011

Kung Fu Makes Everything Better

This Friday's blog is brought to you by all thing's kung fu. I think martial arts is awesome. I've always wanted to take lessons for martial arts in some form or another--I'm not picky. My parents weren't too in to that idea, and I took ballet lessons instead for most of my early life--not that I'm complaining; I liked dance. I just wanted kung fu lessons too. I can only blame my parents though for the earlier years. Now I'm older, and I still haven't gotten around to taking lessons. That's my fault. XD One of these days I'll change that. Maybe I'll find a place where I can sign the whole family up once Logan gets a little bit older and capable of better following directions.

Considering how awesome I consider kung fu to be, it's no surprise that Forbidden Kingdom ranks up there as one of my favorite movies. Seriously, it's Jackie Chan and Jet Li. How could a movie with such a pair of awesome kung fu artists not be great? This was one of the few movies I actually went to the movie theater to see, and the only reason I really wanted to watch it was to see the inevitable battle between Jackie Chan and Jet Li. The movie did not disappoint. I got awesome kung fu scenes; the story line and dialogue were also fun. Next to Lord of the Rings, it's one of my favorite movies to stick in when I'm working on the more tedious and mindless parts of cosplay or art projects. Another good martial arts movie is Kung Fu Hustle. If you can't tell, my favorites do tend to be the ones that don't try to take themselves seriously.

This also ties in with one of my favorite additions to Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. (No, this really wasn't an excuse to fangasm more about how much I love FMA). With the addition of the Xing Characters, Ling, May Chang, Lan Fan, and Fu, FMA got more than a little bit better. =P For realz, kung fu makes everything better. So do zombies for that matter, and FMA: Brotherhood added those too, but that's something for another blog. Not only did FMA add straight-up martial arts with Ling and his pair of ninja bodyguards, they combined martial arts and alchemy with May Chang's alchehestry (or however you spell it) techniques. *squee* Okay, I'm going to stop now.

In short, I really enjoy a good martial arts show. It appears in many, although not all, of my favorite movies and anime. You can see homages to that in the fact that I have three martial arts based designs in the character archetype set: the Ninja, the Wise Master, and the Drunken Master. I'm planning to do a few more archetypes; maybe I'll work in a few more with kung fu themes. I might even do a Forbidden Kingdom bookmark set. How awesome would that be?